More than 1,000 troops are withdrawn from LA
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Shawan Hubler
The Pentagon on Wednesday released more than 1,000 troops who had been sent to Los Angeles in June, the latest scaling back of President Donald Trump’s contentious deployment of the National Guard in Southern California.
The withdrawal of roughly 1,350 members of the Guard comes after thousands of other troops were released in recent weeks. Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement that about 250 Guard soldiers would remain in Los Angeles “to protect federal personnel and property.”
The demobilization of most of the California National Guard’s 49th Military Police Brigade occurred with only about a week left in what the White House had suggested would be a 60-day deployment that began June 7.
At the height of the deployment, nearly 5,000 members of the Guard had been federalized and dispatched to Los Angeles with orders to help quell protests that had erupted over immigration raids and to protect federal agents conducting the raids.
Democratic leaders in the state accused the Trump administration of provoking the protests by sending masked federal agents to car washes and other workplaces to detain immigrants, and then using the subsequent public outrage over the raids as a pretext for military action.
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles compared the deployment to an “armed occupation,” and Gov. Gavin Newsom sued federal officials, saying that the deployment was an illegal domestic use of federal troops that had diverted the National Guard from critical functions. Figures released by the governor’s office on Wednesday showed that fentanyl seizures had fallen significantly after the deployment diverted about one-third of the 450 Guard members on a state counterdrug task force.
Federal officials defended the military presence, stating that it was necessary to stop civil unrest that played out over several days, mostly in downtown Los Angeles outside government buildings. As the weeks passed, however, protests died down, giving the soldiers little to keep them occupied. According to state officials as well as the military’s Northern Command, which is overseeing the president’s military response in California, only a few hundred of the thousands of troops had been sent on assignments away from their Southern California base.
One National Guard contingent faced protesters in a field outside a cannabis farm in Ventura County. Another sat in trucks while immigration agents conducted a show of force in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, marching past soccer fields that had been vacated in part because word had spread that they were coming.
In interviews with The New York Times, members of the California National Guard said the deployment had severely eroded the morale of a force that, during the January wildfires, had been welcomed by many in the city, and Guard officials expressed concerns that the deployment would hurt re-enlistment.
Wednesday’s withdrawal followed the departure earlier this month of 700 active-duty Marines, nearly 2,000 California National Guard soldiers and a smaller contingent of about 150 specialized Guard firefighters. Pentagon officials estimated that the cost of deploying the Marines and National Guard soldiers would run to about $134 million.
In his statement, Parnell expressed appreciation for the support of service members “who mobilized to Los Angeles to defend federal functions against the rampant lawlessness occurring in the city.”
On Wednesday, Newsom called on the administration again to send the last of the troops home, saying in a statement that “the women and men of our military deserve more than to be used as props in the federal government’s propaganda machine.”